By the second day of work, our agency, Hope CDA, which the CRWRC had set us up with, had run out of projects to put us on. That was a frustrating day. They sent us back to a house we had essentially finished the first day. There was hardly enough work left for two people, let alone the five of us. Even worse, we couldn’t do anything until the site supervisor arrived with tools and he seemed to be taking his sweet time coming to set us to work.

By noon, we were back to waiting.

The next day, we kept the site supervisor in sight so we weren’t sitting waiting for him, not knowing what was going on. We had a new house to work on and were pretty excited about the prospect of actual work. But then we saw the 15 passenger van of Americorp volunteers. And five minutes after arriving at the site, a van of middle-aged women from Rochester pulled up, making our light work even lighter.

Before noon, we were back to waiting.

By the last day we gave up on our agency. The pastor at the church we stayed at put us to work around the property. The day was much more busy and left us feeling more productive, more useful.

But the real kick in the ass about this trip? The secretary at the church we stayed at said there’s not lack of work that needs to be done in the area still. Mississippi has not yet completely recovered. But the funding to do the work has dried up. Volunteers keep coming, but the money for materials and overseers doesn’t.